All the King's Horses
by Lila2
Summary: She can't be put back together again.


**Title:** "All the King's Horses"

**Author**: Lila

**Rating:** PG-13

**Spoilers/Warnings:** Minor spoilers for "A Trip to the Dentist"

**Pairing/Character:** Madison Sinclair

**Length:** one-shot

**Summary:** She can't be put back together again

Author's Note: Just wanted to try something different, and Madison has always been a character who's interested me. Her hair color change in AtttD gave me an idea, and it's taken until now to put it to good use. The story takes place after the bathroom scene, but before Logan's party, and basically encompasses all of Madison's behavior over the season. Some minor notes: since Lilly Kane's age was never fully established, she and Duncan are twins or at least the same year for the purposes of this story, and because I never got a lock on when Lilly/Veronica's friendship started, I made it up. Hope everyone enjoys.

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"She's not the kind of girl  
Who likes to tell the world 

About the way she feels about herself

She takes a little time in making up her mind

She doesn't want to fight against the tide

And lately I'm not the only one

I say never trust anyone"

"The Trick is to Keep Breathing," Garbage

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_**"You love me, don't you?"**_

She was fourteen when she lost her virginity in the back of Peter Graham's jeep because she'd heard a rumor that Lilly Kane was looking to give it up and for the first time in her life she was going to do something Lilly Kane hadn't done. It sucked and it hurt and she was sticky when he drove her home, and she cried herself to sleep. They didn't talk the next morning at school because he was a senior and she was a freshman and he had a girlfriend he'd been dating since sophomore year. He walked down the hall, arm slung around Lindsay Shepard's shoulders, acting like he never knew her. Like he could see right through her. Like she wasn't there at all.

**_"Stringy haired white trash!"_**

She knows she's generic. She knows there are hundreds of other versions of herself crowding Neptune's halls, blonde and beautiful and bitchy. She knows she's mean. She knows she's cruel. She knows she's hated and loathed and despised. And she knows Lilly Kane wasn't. Lilly Kane was beloved. Adored. Sacred. And no one would say any different, even those who knew her best.

She wants to say she was sad when Lilly Kane died. She wants to say she cried and mourned and sobbed, clutching her candle so hard the wax burned her skin. She wants to say she remembers Lilly fondly the way everyone else wants to remember her. She wants to say she's not glad Lilly is dead and buried and out of her life forever.

Because for as long as she can remember, she's hated Lilly Kane.

Lilly Kane was that girl every other girl wanted to be, and for a while, she got to be her. She was ten when Veronica Mars walked into her fourth grade class and everything fell apart. She and Lilly were wearing matching pink sweaters and matching purple leggings and matching glittery ribbons in their pigtails when the new girl asked if she could sit at their lunch table. Lilly laughed and scooted over to make room and she'd gone with, sliding until she was on the edge of the bench, teetering, on the verge of a fall. Lilly turned to the new girl and asked her name and where she was from and what she thought of Neptune, while she picked at her sandwich and chips and pretended her best friend wasn't ignoring her. Like the new girl wasn't cooler. Like her oldest friendship wasn't about to end. Like it had never existed at all.

_**"Good luck, Duncan."**_

Duncan Kane was the first boy she ever kissed and the only one she wanted to keep kissing. Shelly locked her in a closet with him at Meg's twelfth birthday party and he'd stood there stiffly under the dim light until she'd reached up on her tiptoes and pressed her mouth to his. It was weird and a little uncomfortable, but her heart seemed to skip a beat when one of his hands snaked around her waist for the briefest of seconds. Then the door opened and they jumped apart, facing bright light and laughter and Veronica and Lilly whispering in the corner. At school the next week he couldn't meet her gaze and his cheeks flushed pink whenever she looked his way. Then he met Logan, and Logan met Lilly, and the Fabulous Four were born. She never got to kiss Duncan again, and when she asked him about it years later, with Dick's arm wrapped around her waist and Veronica's hand firmly clutched in his, he looked at her like he didn't know what she was talking about. Like their lips had never brushed and her pulse hadn't jumped and sparks hadn't sprinted across her belly. Like it had never happened at all.

**_"They're crashing my party. You need to leave. You don't belong here."_**

Two days after Cindy Mackenzie showed up at her house searching for a phantom purse, her parents sat her down and told her they needed to talk and the truth came spilling out about babies switched at birth and million dollar pay-offs and little girls loving the wrong parents…and she knew who to blame. After school the next day she plopped down in Georgio's chair, and instead of bleaching her roots within an inch of their lives, she wanted dark. "Like death," she'd told him and walked out looking like cheerleader suffering an identity crisis. Her mother – the woman she called "mom" – took one look at her and cried and dragged her to her own stylist and she sat in a chair for hours until her hair was a soothing caramel. The shade of brown didn't matter to her. She just wanted to look like them, be like them, be a part of them, of something. Fitting in had never been difficult – belonging was another story altogether.

She remembered Shelly's party vividly. And in her own version of hell, she has Veronica Mars to thank for those memories. She hated Veronica, more then she hated Peter Graham and Lilly Kane combined. She'd never had much, never been the prettiest or the smartest or the funniest. But she had Lilly Kane, and that meant something – until Veronica Mars took it away. Veronica was always easy to hate, perky like sunshine and moonbeams, frail and simpering and always in need of protection, big, strong Duncan to the rescue. It got even easier after Lilly died, when everyone else turned on poor little Veronica and she got to lead the charge. Payback was more fun then she ever anticipated, and revenge was even sweeter – for stealing Lilly, for stealing Duncan, for stealing her life. She wasn't going to let it happen again.

Dick was never a prince, never a shining knight, but he was always hers. She remembers Veronica wrapped around him, hands tangled in his hair, mouth pressed tightly against his, trying to steal what belonged to her, remembers seeing red. The truth is a funny thing, the way it twists and bends around itself and turns out to be the last thing ever expected. Turned out Dick was more like an evil warlord and Veronica Mars was the princess victim. Like she trusted all the people she should hate and hated all the people she could trust. Like whatever she feels for Veronica Mars never existed at all.

**_"Hello, America. You wanted Lilly. You got her."_**

She knows she's generic. She knows there are hundreds of other versions of herself crowding Neptune's halls, blonde and beautiful and bitchy. She knows she's mean. She knows she's cruel. She knows she's hated and loathed and despised. But at least people know her name, even if it's not really hers. They know her face. They know she's real.

**

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****Crib Notes:**

_"You love me, don't you?"_ – Lilly Kane, "Wrath of Con"

_"Stringy haired white trash!"_ - Madison Sinclair, "A Trip to the Dentist"

_"Good luck, Duncan"_- Madison Sinclair, "Return of the Kane"

_"They're crashing my party. You need to leave. You don't belong here."_- Madison Sinclair, "Silence of the Lamb"

_"Hello, America. You wanted Lilly. You got her."_- Lilly Kane, "Wrath of Con"

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Writers live for feedback – please leave some if you have the chance. 


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